Review: A Politics of Love by Marianne Williamson with Additional Links

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Crime (Government), Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Disease & Health, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Leadership, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Amazon Page

SUMMARY REVIEW WITH LINKS

Marianne Williamson, A Politics of Love: A Handbook for a New American Revolution (HarperOne, 2019)

6 Stars – The Only Authentic Democratic Candidate

Reviewed by Robert David Steele

This is a six page summary review of a political-cultural-economic-social transformation that is both needed and possible, by the one person seeking the Democratic nomination for the presidency who appears authentic, inclusive, and truthful. Links to free online supporting documentation for the author's radically humanistic and deeply spiritual proposals are included in the formal review. An additional five pages of links and one paragraph extracts are appended to give the reader easy access to a range of mass media depictions of the author that range from angelic to whacko.

Continue reading “Review: A Politics of Love by Marianne Williamson with Additional Links”

Review: Skin in the Game – Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Intelligence (Commercial), Misinformation & Propaganda, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

6 Star – Skin in the Game = Ethics = Sustainable

By the author Black Swan and Anti-Fragility, among many other works, this book is a simplified overview — a capstone work — and the easiest to read.

Skin in the Game is defined by the author as symmetry of risk and reward — in other words, you don't get to externalize losses to others while reaping the rewards without any personal risk.

That pretty much sums up everything that is wrong with banking, commerce, government, religions, and universities.

Continue reading “Review: Skin in the Game – Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life”

Review: ANTIFRAGILE – Things That Gain From Disorder

7 Star Top 1%, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

7 Star Transformative — As Important as Governing the Commons — LOCALIZE

For those who do not know this, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action earned Elinor Ostrom a Nobel Peace Prize in Economics. This book, by the author of Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable   is of that caliber. A later book,, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life is easier to read — if you have time for only one go with the latter.

The core message of this book is that you cannot predict or control high impact low probability events, but you can downsize, localize, you can decentralize, and in so doing make much of the ecology “antifragile.”

Continue reading “Review: ANTIFRAGILE – Things That Gain From Disorder”

Review: The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Budget Process & Politics, Complexity & Catastrophe, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Information Operations, Politics, Priorities, Public Administration, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Amazon Page

Michael Lewis

6 Stars Presidential Transitions Matter and President Trump Blew It — With Follow-on Consequences

Although I am a huge fan of President Trump — I wrote the first article on how he could win (“Counter-Coup: How Trump Can Win,” CounterPunch, 14 August 2018) and went on to write the 30 piece Trump Revolution Series, I also believe in learning from the mistakes of others — this book has a great deal to offer the next President.

Early on in the book we learn that then candidate Trump did not want a presidential transition team and refused to assign campaign funds for it. When he was persuaded by Chris Christie that he needed one and Christie offered to raise funds separately, Trump assented, only to blow a fuse when he learned Christie had raised $9 million.

QUOTE (21): “Trump was apoplectic, actually yelling, You're stealing my money! You're stealing my fucking money! What the fuck is this?

The book offers one capstone understanding and five insights that every presidential candidate should take deeply to heart:

Continue reading “Review: The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis”

Review: TRUMPED – A Nation on the Brink of Ruin – And How to Bring It Back

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Best Practices in Management, Complexity & Resilience, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)
Amazon Page

Some books are so far out of my personal ability to digest in detail that I very rapidly convert to my scanning mode with one big question that I ask on every page: does this book and its author pass the smell test with me, and would I, if President, want to trust this author to help implement his ideas without necessarily understanding them in detail?

Not only is the answer for this book and this author a resounding YES, but on pages 31-32 I have a note, “Holy Shit! Could DT be doing all this?” Those two pages outline ten great deals that Donald Trump could be pursuing: peace, jobs, sound-money, Glass-Steagall, federalist, regulatory, liberty, health-care, fiscal, and governance.

Continue reading “Review: TRUMPED – A Nation on the Brink of Ruin – And How to Bring It Back”

Review: Designing Regenerative Cultures

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Economics, Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Spiritual), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Priorities, Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Daniel Christian Wahl

6 Star Handbook for Saving Civilization & Earth

This book makes the jump from 5 stars (generally I don't bother to review a book if it is not a four or five star read) to 6 stars — my top ten percent — because of the combination of Questions Asked, glorious color graphics, and the total holistic nature of the book — this is easily a PhD thesis in holistic analytics, true cost economics, and open source everything engineering. Indeed, this book could be used as a first-year reference across any humanities and science domain, they would be the better for it.

Continue reading “Review: Designing Regenerative Cultures”

Review: The Art of Shaping the Metropolis

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, Best Practices in Management, Budget Process & Politics, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Country/Regional, Future, Leadership, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Pedro B. Ortiz

6-Star Guide to Saving Every City in Every Country — a World-Changing Book

This is an extraordinary book, easily five stars but I am elevating it to 6 stars (my top ten percent across over 2000 reviews, all but a handful non-fiction) because the author is not just a genius, but he explains his deep multi-level knowledge brilliantly. I have never seen a collection of complicated nuanced topics presented in such a compelling, easy to understand, well-illustrated manner. The case studies abound. The publisher is to be complemented for the purity of the presentation — a stunning book with perfectly laid out pages, glossy color on every page, and a superb index, which is where most publishers fail their authors.

Continue reading “Review: The Art of Shaping the Metropolis”